Chair Roger Anderson called the meeting of the 2011 Academic Coordinating
Commission to order at 4:05 pm on Tuesday, March 1, 2011. There were twenty-two
(22) people present including Commissioners, guests and recorder (see attached
roster).

ACC Minutes of February 15, 2011 – Approved

Reports:
Roger Anderson reported on three major issues which will be facing ACC, CUE, and
the Senate in the coming quarters:

1)Thinking
about the quality of GUR program and Majors Curricula, in context of budget
constraints, course availability, course delivery, time to enter the major, time
to degree, and more;

2)Improving
the procedures for proposing curricular changes for departments, colleges, CUE,
ACC, and the Registrar;

Anderson pointed out that ACC in interaction with the
Provost and VPUE is discussing ways to reduce time to degree and time to
entering the major. Anderson suggested that with more efficiency students can
even get a minor which is a powerful and useful addition. In addition, moving
students through the GURs with a slightly slower spread over the first two years
may provide a more coherent approach allowing students to end up with a minor,
thus turning a pressure from the State into strength for our students.

3/1/2011 -- READING OF CURRICULUM MINUTES
(Exhibit B)

Committee

Date

Topics

All Approved
Minutes below are for the Catalog Year 2011-2012

71

Humanities and Social Sciences

2/8/11

ACCEPTED.
Cancelled courses have had no enrollment in several years.

Lisa Zuzarte emphasized that programs that are either
cancelled or put into hiatus still must come through
ACC because that provides the only record of such actions. It is
through the record that CAPP is encoded and changes made to Banner, the
Catalog, the Provost’ office record, and the HEC Board..

On this topic significant work is being done in a number of
departments, for example, Physics has rearranged curriculum as has
Environmental Science so they can focus on their core.

LeaAnn Martin noted that some courses cancelled in Liberal
Studies (Student-faculty designed majors elementary and secondary education)
had no majors since 2004, and Humanities Elementary Ed BA none since spring
2007.

72

Fairhaven College

2/2/11

ACCEPTED.

73

Graduate Council Report

12/28/10

ACCEPTED.
Review of MA of Ed. program In Environmental Education

74

Graduate Council

1/25/11

ACCEPTED.
Commissioners see increases credits, but no sufficient additional
description in course content in CCE.

Beth Boland, Chair of the Woodring Graduate Committee was present
and confirmed that increased assignments in the syllabi were discussed and
increase addressed but the information didn’t get into the final minutes.

Commissioners congratulated Beth Boland for clear and well done
minutes.

76

Woodring

2/11/11

ACCEPTED. All
forwarded to TCCC

77

Graduate Council

11/16/10

ACCEPTED BUT NOT BIO 586
since the faculty member will not be available to teach the course. The
department will let ACC know if the course will still be offered.

CSD 546 TABLED.
Pleasereport how many credits (not clear if it is 2 or 3 or
only 1) (Grad Council since confirmed this is one credit)

Regarding page 14, Zuzarte will clear up information related to
when students enter the program.

Commissioners noted that small changes regarding application information
should not come to ACC.

**

CUE minutes

1/27/11

ACCEPTED.
(These had been postponed** from previous meeting).

78

CUE

2/15/11 &

ACCEPTED. Final
GEOL text. GUR and Assessment discussions.

79

Graduate Council

11/9/10

ACCEPTED. REQUEST TO SEE REPORT.
Commissioners asked to see the request that was discussed in the paragraph
on page 2 regarding MBA approval of graduate faculty. We don’t see the
request so we don’t know the policy..

80

Graduate Council

11/23/10

TABLED FOR CONSIDERATION NEXT QUARTER. (will be approved for the 2011-2012
catalog).

CONCURRENT DISCUSSION:

1)Program Review:
Commissioners pointed out that while instructions on how to review
seem identical across graduate programs the actual reviews are not
consistent. Perhaps a more universal or standard approach would be useful,
including a timeline. Only those programs that require certification are
reviewed regularly. The HEC Board requires a seven year review process.

Steve VanderStaay
noted that we now have much more data, including the senior exit survey,
employment data, time to degree, and number of credits for graduating,
providing more tools for departments.

Roger Anderson
then spoke to GUR reform, and wondered if we should all ask what the majors
really look like, should they have more personnel, should they move into a new
area of study? And other questions.

2)Full Credit Load: John Bower noted the possible change in time to graduation if
courses that were 4 credits were reduced to 3 credits. Some 3 credit classes
with a 5 credit work load prevent students from registering for 15 credits and
they stay with just 12. That slows down time to graduation.

oBower recommends that
faculty get together in departments to look at syllabi and suggests that there
might be some courses where the credits could change based on the syllabi.. This
is a good discussion to have around campus.

oOthers added that this
might flame the rumor that a full load is only 12 credits, which is supported by
the Financial Aid requirement to carry 12 credits.

oVanderStaay commented
that 14 credits is the average load and that fewer students are taking a full
load. Students self-report less homework than 5 years ago and it does not add
up to the credit load they are taking. There are things we could do about this,
one example might be to add an extra credit for a course with service learning.

oThe FIGs program provides a 2
credit seminar Fall term, If Figs were expanded more freshmen would have a full
schedule. This is not a bad discussion to have.

oACC has never brought
in 30 students to talk to us about their experience with our curriculum, yet
when we have had a focus group at the State level it proved very instructive.
There are anecdotal stories about difficulties getting into the majors. But in
the senior exit survey students don’t complain about that much. A very small
percent talk about course access.

3)Freshman Year Sets the Tone: Is there changed expectation about the amount of work a 3, 4, or 5
credit course would require? Today it seems like students are working less hard
but “feel more oppressed”. One of the first year goals is to have an accurate
impression of freshman year. What happens in freshman year sets the whole tone
of what being in college will be like.

Megan Housekeeper
remembers a misinterpretation of how much work is to be done outside of class
in her freshman year. For large classes in her first year she thought if you
went to class you would do well on the test as many large classes are
test-based. Her first impression was a lot less work outside of class.

Classes are so
variable. Holly Folk mentioned that Liberal Studies is planning to
standardize the outside work aligned with credit hours. This might give
faculty a sense of the difference in credit workload and is a productive idea
for ACC to think about.

VanderStaay
concurred that norming in a department is good. We should have best practices
for Humanities GUR for example: “do some formal writing and read so many and
such pages per week”. Faculty could make a case for appropriateness and what
makes a good class.

At present we have
no standard or sense of what a good GUR class is. If there were such a
standard people would use it. People are hungry, not to be told what to do,
but to be given a standard and expectation of what it means to study a GUR
here. 100 level courses must serve students to develop good study habits and
prepare for the major. Everybody wants to be a good teacher so some guidance
would be welcomed.

4)Report on CUE Discussions: Rubrics. CUE has been coming up with rubrics that match our GUR competencies
but don’t know yet how rubrics will be used to assess courses and is now seeking
feedback. ACC can ask CUE at end of year what rubrics look like, is there a plan
on how to use them, etc.

Too Many
Comptencies? Tracy Thorndike
Christ wondered about the feasibility of developing assessment for a system we
may no longer offer. Eleven competencies are too many. CATL liked the LEAP
initiatives previously. CUE brought GUR and Assessment together, but now how
will we decide what to quantify and what is it we want to assess?

Anthony-Cahill
asked if we had to have something in place while we determine what the future
GUR program will look like.

Leap.
VanderStaay suggested it should
be based on data from student performance, but agreed assessment is difficult
with so many items to assess. Perhaps we can provide a small presentation on
LEAP if Commissioners wanted it. It is hard to take a step backwards; our
competencies have been affirmed by committee but they are a little unwieldy.

It had seemed like
the competencies mapped pretty well with LEAP and that LEAP was valuable.
Lots of hours of work went into this. Scientific literacy and quantitative
literacy are different and would need separate outcomes. Perhaps CUE could
revisit. We have to be somewhat pragmatic and figure out a way to contract
things.

We can ask CUE
that now that it has spent a year on this does it wish to affirm the
competencies or revisit the LEAP, or can we ask for a progress report that
addresses these issues..

Billie Lindsey
remarked that it sounds like we are getting feedback from faculty that maybe
this is just a little too much and we might need some reconsideration.

And there is a
large variation in the competencies related to courses and disciplines. The
appropriate time to address competencies is after a curriculum cycle.

How Can it
be Improved? Anthony-Cahill
affirmed that this all seems to be in process. So perhaps we can ask if it is
heading in the right direction without any preconceived notions, and how can
we make it better?